Home for Christmas (24 page)
‘You’ve lost weight,’ he told her.
‘I haven’t felt much like eating since the accident,’ Sally admitted.
‘Come on.’ Holding her hand, George led her out of the hospital, and then hailed a taxi, telling the driver, ‘The Savoy, please.’
‘The Savoy?’ Sally queried astonished.
‘Afternoon tea,’ George explained. ‘You need feeding up, and I . . . I need to talk to you, and it’s too cold for the park.’
‘We could go to a Lyons restaurant,’ Sally suggested, her naturally thrifty soul worried about him spending his hard-earned money on somewhere as expensive as the Savoy, but George turned his head away from her so that Sally had to strain to hear him.
‘Things have changed, Sally, and there’s something I have to tell you.’
His words, so unexpected, felt like a sledgehammer blow against her heart, driving the breath from her lungs, and filling her with anxiety. His manner towards her was distant, a yawning space between them as he sat as far away from her as possible, when right now what she wanted more than anything else was for him to take her in his arms with masterful disregard for the proprieties, and kiss her senseless whilst he told her that he couldn’t bear them being apart. In short, Sally admitted, what she wanted was for George to exhibit the kind of behaviour that, prior to the accident she would have denied she could ever want. But now, more than anything, she wanted to be protected and cherished, and loved.
But that wasn’t what George was here for. She could tell from his withdrawn manner that he had something on his mind.
Dismayed, Sally could only sit tensely in the taxi, feeling as though a blow were about to fall on her as it pulled up in the entrance to the hotel.
Sally, like the others, had heard all about Dulcie’s visit to The Ritz in the company of her new American beau, but she felt no sense of excitement or triumph herself as she and George were ushered into the luxuriously appointed foyer by its uniformed doorman.
Nor did she pay any attention to the elegantly dressed women already seated to take tea, their fur coats discarded on the banquettes and chairs surrounding the tables, the discreet hum of refined female voices mingling with the expensive sound of china cups touching china saucers. All Sally’s attention was concentrated on George.
Again unlike Dulcie, Sally was relieved when they were shown to a table that was tucked away out of direct public view, her tension growing as she had to wait for the ritual of giving and receiving their order to be got through, followed by the pouring of their tea before she could finally be alone with George.
And yet, instead of asking him why he had brought her here, to her own shame at her cowardice Sally then started to ask George about his new job, for all the world as though he hadn’t said those weighted words to her in the taxi, she admitted, as he let her ask.
‘It’s partly because of what I’ve seen and learned whilst I’ve been there that I’m here today, Sally,’ George told her quietly. ‘The men – boys, no more than that in many cases – come in with the most dreadful disfiguring wounds, wounds that rob them of the futures they had expected to have. So many of them have regrets not about what they have done but what they haven’t done. That has made me think . . . it’s made me see . . . Life is so precious. Happiness, and love are so fragile.’ He paused whilst Sally’s heart thumped heavily into her ribs with dread as she waited for the knife to fall, the words to be spoken that would end their relationship and set George free to find the happiness he had obviously decided did not lie with her.
‘The thing is, Sally . . . Oh God,’ George swore. ‘I’m just no good at this. I’d thought that if we came here, somewhere romantic that somehow . . .’
Somewhere romantic?
Sally’s heart was still thudding but for a different reason now, its beat swinging wildly between hope and a fear of believing in that hope.
‘I know we said that we’d wait, that we’d be sensible, that there’s a war on, but, Sally . . .’ George reached for her hand beneath the table and Sally let him take it. ‘. . . I don’t want to be sensible Sally, not after coming so close to losing you, and I damn well don’t want to wait living with the fear that because of this war we might never . . . Sally, will you marry me?’
‘Yes. Yes, George, I will,’ Sally promised him in a weakly exhaled breath of giddy joy that brought tears to her eyes.
Somehow George was sitting next to her and then he was kissing her and she was kissing him back, and it was every bit as passionate and exciting as she had longed for it to be.
‘I love you so much,’ George told her. ‘When I got your letter telling me about the train, and with what I see every day at the hospital, I knew that despite what we’d agreed I had to ask you to marry me.’
‘Oh, George.’
‘You’re crying.’
‘Because I’m so happy. I was afraid that you were going to tell me that if was over between us,’ Sally admitted.
‘Never. How could you think that?’
‘I don’t know. I was afraid of losing you.’
‘Oh, my precious love, that could never happen. There’s a ring,’ George said, his voice cracking slightly. ‘My grandmother’s. She left it to me but if you don’t care for the idea—’
‘I love it,’ Sally assured him truthfully. ‘And I’ll love the ring as well. Knowing it was your grandmother’s will make it even more special.’
‘I hoped you’d say that. Oh, Sally.’
Sally squeezed his fingers as she watched him fight to get his feelings under control.
‘I’ll write to my parents and ask them to send it. It won’t come in time for us to get engaged at Christmas but we could make an announcement.’
‘No,’ Sally explained, ‘Agnes and Ted are planning to get engaged officially over Christmas. Ted doesn’t earn very much and he gives most of what he does earn to his mother. Getting engaged formally will be a big thing for them because they’ve had to wait, and I don’t want to take the shine off that for them by us announcing our engagement at the same time. Besides,’ she added truthfully, ‘it will be nice to keep it to ourselves for a while: our special secret that we can share. I just wish . . .’ Sally bit her lip, then went on huskily, ‘I just wish that my mother could have known about you and me, George.’
‘Maybe she does,’ he told her gruffly. ‘And if she does I hope she knows, too, that I’ll look after you for her, Sally.’
Another shared look of an emotion that went too deep for words was exchanged between them.
‘I don’t want a long engagement,’ George said.
‘Neither do it,’ Sally agreed.
They smiled at one another, hesitant uncertain but proud smiles, both knowing that they had taken their first steps down a path that would be theirs to share.
‘How long can you stay in London? If you haven’t got a room I think that Olive would probably let you sleep on her front room sofa.’
‘I’ve got to go back this evening. I had to barter my next day off with my opposite number just to get up here. We’re always busy, but the recent bombing raids over Germany have meant that we’re getting an increasing number of new patients. The work Mr McIndoe is doing is marvellous, Sally. He’s a genius, a miracle worker when he operates, but there’s more to it than skin grafts and rebuilding badly burned and damaged faces. Mr McIndoe believes in treating the whole person. He says that there’s no point in rebuilding a chap’s face if his desire to live has also been shattered because of what his injuries have done to him emotionally. I’m not very good at explaining the breadth and depth of what he’s trying to achieve. You’ve got to come down and see for yourself.’
‘I’d like to,’ Sally agreed, ‘but it’s you I shall really be wanting to come down and see, George.’
‘Sally.’ His soft groan sent a thrill of emotion singing through her veins.
A December dusk was darkening the streets when they left the Savoy. Sally didn’t resist or demur when George took advantage of the privacy of a shadowy doorway, taking her in his arms to kiss her.
‘I wish you didn’t have to go,’ Sally said, kissing him back. Right now she wanted to stay in his arms for ever, feeling the unsteady thump of his heart against her own and the warmth of his body, knowing that she was not alone after all.
‘I wish we could be together tonight,’ she whispered to him, ‘properly together, I mean, George.’
His arms tightened round her.
‘Jane, the girl in the compartment with me when the train was bombed, said that she wished . . . well, she said she’d always behaved as a respectable girl is supposed to behave, but thinking that she was going to die made her wish . . . I don’t want to die not having known . . .’ Sally trailed off, absently sketching doodles into the thick fabric of George’s overcoat with her fingernail in her self-consciousness.
‘You’ve gone very quiet,’ she said, after a pause.
‘I’m just thinking again how lucky I am. You’ve echoed my own thoughts so completely, Sally. You’ve said what is in my heart, but what I felt it wasn’t fair to you to say. One hears about chaps who put pressure on their girls by telling them that they’re going off to war and might not come back, and I don’t want you ever to feel that my love for you is like that, because it isn’t.’
George kissed her forehead and then cupped her face in his hands. ‘My love for you is for all of you, for all our lives, for everything that we will share, but right now there’s nothing I want more than to love you in the most intimate and precious way there is, Sally, to make you mine, to celebrate what we have before life can snatch it away from us. War does that.’
‘Yes,’ Sally agreed. ‘It does.’
They looked at one another, and then George exhaled unsteadily.
‘There’s never been a time in my life when I’ve felt happier – or more afraid because of that happiness,’ he confided. ‘As a man I should be standing here being big and strong and telling you that I’ll always be here to protect you and take care of you, but . . .’
Sally reached out to him. ‘That kind of thing isn’t appropriate for us or our generation, George. Neither of us can make promises we both know this war may not allow us to keep. It’s enough for me – everything to me, in fact – that you love me and that I love you in return. We’re true partners in that love in a way that previous generations couldn’t be. Our generation are pioneers when it comes to making promises to one another, every bit as much as Mr McIndoe is a pioneer in his field of medicine. I love you, George, for everything that you are, and as you are.’
Of course they had to seal the emotion of the words they’d just shared with another kiss, and then another, but finally it was time for them to part.
‘But not for long,’ George promised her. ‘It will be Christmas soon.’
‘But we’ll be lucky if we can get leave together.’
‘We’ll be lucky,’ George assured her.
‘You did say that Ted’s sisters are going to be at this Christmas Party, didn’t you?’ Drew asked Tilly as they walked arm in arm down Oxford Street, avoiding the busy press of Christmas shoppers.
‘Yes,’ Tilly confirmed. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason,’ Drew assured her, grinning when Tilly stopped walked and disengaged her arm from his to turn and confront him with a mock look of disapproval.
‘You’re fibbing. I know that there’s something you aren’t telling me,’ she said.
‘I can’t say any more yet. It’s a secret,’ Drew insisted.
‘There shouldn’t be secrets between couples,’ Tilly told him sternly.
‘Oh, very well then,’ Drew gave in. ‘I wrote and asked my mom and sisters if they could send over that dolly and the pram that Agnes said Ted’s sisters wanted and that he couldn’t find, and enough stuff to give all the other kids something now that I’m to be playing Father Christmas at the party.’
‘Oh, Drew.’ Tilly’s eyes sparkled with love and delight. ‘How kind you are. They’ll all be thrilled. Now I understand why you insisted on us going to Harrods toy department, and why you asked me all those questions about the dolls and the prams. Oh, Drew,’ she repeated happily, ‘you are wonderful. Agnes was saying only the other night that the only second-hand pram Ted had been able to find was in a very poor state, and the owner wanted far too much for it.’ A thought struck her. ‘Will they arrive in time, though?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Your mother sounds so kind. I wish I could meet your family, Drew. Have you told them yet – about us?’
‘I’ve told them all about you and your mom,’ Drew assured her. He looked and sounded slightly tense and Tilly lovingly guessed that he was thinking how very far away his family were.
‘It can’t be easy for you, being so far away from them,’ she sympathised. ‘I know how much I’d miss my mum and number thirteen if I was the one who was living somewhere else, in another country.’ Her heart gave a small hurried thump, and, as though he understood exactly what she was thinking, Drew reached for her hand and squeezed in gently.
‘If I’m going to write that book about Fleet Street one day when this war is over then that means that I’m gonna have to make my home over here,’ he reassured her.
‘You’d do that?’ Tilly asked him, her emotions too tenderly touched for her to keep what she was feeling hidden from him. ‘You’d stay here?’
When Drew nodded his head and took her hand within his into the pocket of his Burberry raincoat, removing her glove so that he could stroke her fingers within its private intimacy, Tilly couldn’t hold back what she was feeling.
‘But your family is in America, Drew and—’
‘You are here, Tilly.’
‘Oh, Drew.’
‘If you keep on looking at me like that I’m gonna have to kiss you,’ he warned her.
Tilly giggled and blushed, reminding him, ‘We’re on Oxford Street and it’s broad daylight.’
‘You’re right,’ Drew agreed immediately and, as far as Tilly was concerned, rather disappointingly. ‘I can’t kiss you the way I want to kiss you here in public.’
Tilly’s heart soared. ‘I can’t wait for New Year’s Eve,’ she told Drew in a half-whisper. Her mother had agreed that Drew could take her to Hammersmith Palais on New Year’s Eve, to the big New Year’s Eve dance there – a dance at which, late in the evening, there were bound to be dimmed lights and slow music so that lovers could get closer to one another.
Despite the war, or maybe because of it, Oxford Street’s shops were all making a brave effort to send out a message of Christmas cheer. Their windows were filled with decorative Christmas scenes: Father Christmases on sleighs, reindeer, their antlers adorned with silver bells, merry-faced elves and gnomes; and, of course, in several windows, glittering shiny Christmas fairies, even if a closer look showed that these figures and their costumes were beginning to look a little worse for wear.
They might also be looking slightly worse for wear, but the spirit of the British people still shone strongly as they shopped, determined to give those they loved the happiest Christmas they could. Of course, when you looked closely, there were faces shadowed by loss and fear, but the general atmosphere was one of general busyness and good cheer.
‘We must go and look at Liberty’s windows on Great Marlborough Street,’ Tilly told Drew eagerly. ‘It’s always so lovely, especially the window dresses with fabrics.’ She gave a small reminiscent sigh. ‘I remember one year they had a window filled with small fairies wearing pink silk dresses trimmed with marabou. I couldn’t believe it when I found one waiting for me under the Christmas tree. Mum had asked the dressmaker to go and have a look at them and make me one. She was always doing lovely things like that for me.’
‘She’s one of the best,’ Drew agreed warmly.
Up ahead of them a street vendor was selling roasted chestnuts, people crowding round his cart waiting to be served, their breath vaporising on the cold air.
A group of burly-looking men in elf costumes were moving amongst the crowd, obviously collecting for a charity. Immediately Tilly opened her handbag, unable to stop herself laughing at the sight of such large men wearing such childish costumes.
‘Fire brigade, miss,’ one of them announced, waving a hat under her nose. ‘We’re collecting for a party for bombed-out kids.’
‘Here, take this,’ Drew insisted, producing two half-crowns, the sight of them making the other man’s eyes widen as he gave an appreciative nod when Drew dropped them into his waiting hat.
‘That was far too much,’ Tilly protested, her heart melting on a fresh wave of love when Drew told her, ‘Poor little tykes, I wish I’d given more.’
There might not be any fairy lights adorning buildings and lampposts this year because of the blackout, but the Christmas spirit was still very much in evidence.
Tilly thought happily of the knitted socks she had bought at Leather Lane Market. Dulcie had derided her for buying them then, but now even she had expressed a grudging admission that filling them ‘for the boys’ to give them on Christmas Day would be fun.
It might be an apple rather than a tangerine they would find in the toe of their stocking, but it was the spirit of Christmas that mattered more than its content,Tilly assured herself, her eyes widening as she spotted a street-seller with a tray of playing cards.
‘What is it?’ Drew asked when she stopped walking.
‘Nothing. You aren’t to look,’ Tilly told him firmly. ‘You have to turn your back and no peeping, otherwise Father Christmas won’t come.’
‘No Santa . . .’ Drew teased her, and then laughed good-naturedly, doing as she asked so that Tilly could hurry over to examine the packs of cards on the tray supported by a string round the street-seller’s neck.
‘Good stuff, this is,’ he told Tilly, seeing her interest.
‘Why are they are in packs of twos?’ Tilly asked him. The cards did indeed look as though they were good quality, at least from what she could see of them in their boxes, the lids removed to reveal the contents.
‘That’s ’cos they’re bridge cards,’ the man told her. ‘Proper posh they are, an’ all, and only tenpence a pack. Bomb-damaged stock, see.’
Remembering Dulcie’s warnings when they had shopped together, Tilly told him firmly, ‘I’ll have to have a proper look at them to make sure they are full packs.’
At first she thought he was going to refuse, but other people were starting to gather round, curious to see what was going on, and with the hope of other customers he gave in and allowed Tilly to remove the packs from the box and inspect them.
The salesman was right, they were good quality, Tilly recognised, and when she looked inside, the lid of the box was stamped with the sign of a royal warrant.
That was enough to have her saying recklessly, ‘I’ll take two boxes.’ It seemed mean to buy only one, which, split in two, meant that two of the boys could have a pack of cards, when the other girls might also want a pack for their stockings. No doubt Dulcie would have called her a fool for not haggling a bit but Tilly didn’t care.
By the time she rejoined Drew, waiting patiently on the pavement with his back turned toward the salesman, the cards were stowed away safely in her handbag. It had been a comment by Dulcie that had inspired her when she’d seen the salesman. Dulcie had read out a line from her brother’s letter, saying that they were having to play cards with half a pack because they’d lost so many of their cards.
Her mind now fully engaged with the fun of Christmas, Tilly thought happily of the Monopoly and snakes-and-ladders boards her mother had kept from Tilly’s childhood, and which came out every Christmas. It would be such fun playing her favourite childhood board games with Drew.
Drew
. . . Tilly moved closer to him, her face rosy and alight with Christmas happiness.
‘I’m getting something really special for Mum,’ she confided to Drew. ‘Dulcie got me a pair of proper leather gloves from a delivery that Selfridges have had in. Whoops!’ She laughed as a determined shopper carrying several large boxes, piled so high it was almost impossible for her to see over them, almost bumped into her. Not that Tilly minded when it gave her the opportunity to move closer to Drew.
The sound of carols being sung emerged from almost every shop they passed, further lifting the spirits.
‘I love Christmas,’ she said to Drew, happily.
‘And I love you,’ he told her back.
Tilly and Drew weren’t the only ones out enjoying the Christmassy atmosphere of London’s shops and the relief from air raids that the city was enjoying.
Agnes felt as though her heart was going to burst with pride as she snatched a quick glance at her Ted, looking so smart in his best Sunday clothes, his face so clean and polished that it positively shone, a determined look in his eyes.
Today was the day that Ted was going to buy Agnes an engagement ring. He had been saving up to do so all year, and now finally the time had come. Agnes was wearing her lovely coat that Tilly’s mother had had made for her the previous autumn, its soft colour highlighting Agnes’s delicate features and colouring, its velvet collar reflecting up the bright winter light around her face, flushed prettily today with the excitement of what lay ahead.
After they had bought the ring they were going to go meet up with Ted’s mother and his sisters, for a celebration tea at Joe Lyons. Just thinking about it all made Agnes feel giddy with happiness and excitement.
‘How did you get on with that woman who had the doll’s pram for sale? The one you told me about the other day? You said you were going round to see her,’ Agnes asked, knowing how much Ted was hoping to get his sisters the pram and doll they had set their hearts on.
Ted shook his head and looked glum. ‘It was no-go. I thought we’d settled on a price but when I got there she told me that she’d had someone else interested in it and that they’d offered her more. I reckon she wanted to get a bit of a Dutch auction between me and this other person, so I told her that I’d give her three and sixpence for it, like we’d agreed. She said she wasn’t going to part with it for three and six, when she knew she could get five bob, so that was that. To be honest, it wasn’t even worth half a crown, it was that shabby.’
‘Oh, Ted, I am sorry.’ Agnes gave his arm a loving squeeze. ‘At least you’ve got the girls a doll, though I know she hasn’t got real hair, or eyes that close, like they wanted.’
Ted exhaled and Agnes gave his arm another comforting squeeze. ‘The doll looks ever so nice in the clothes that Tilly’s mum has helped me to knit. Of course there were only some scraps of wool, on account of the war, so we couldn’t make everything to match.’
‘You’ve done your best, Aggie, I know that. Just like I’ve done mine. Not that I don’t feel that that woman has let me down, not selling that pram to me after she as good as promised it to me. I’m not going to let it spoil today, though. Not when you and I have got an important bit of business of our own to conduct.’
When he smiled at her Agnes’s heart lifted in a fresh surge of pride and gratitude. She was so lucky to have someone as special as Ted to love her. Sometimes she felt as though her chest would burst, just thinking about how lucky she was and how much she loved him.
‘Here’s a jeweller’s,’ Ted pointed out, nudging her. ‘Let’s go and take a gander.’
They weren’t the only couple staring eagerly at the rings on display. In fact, there was quite a crowd of young couples pressing round the window, many of the men in uniform, and some of the women as well. Because of the war many of the rings on display were second-hand, but Agnes, with her starry-eyed gaze, didn’t care how worn they were.
The rings were displayed on trays marked with a price, and Agnes automatically positioned herself so that she could look at the trays with the lowest price. She didn’t care how little her engagement ring cost. what she cared about was being engaged to her Ted. But then she saw it – the ring,
her
ring – and her heart lifted on a surge of protective love.
‘That one looks nice,’ she told Ted, fighting to keep the tremor of desire out of her voice as she pointed to ‘the’ ring.
Ted stared at the narrow band of gold set with a tiny single stone.
‘That one?’ he questioned. ‘But the diamond is so small you can hardly see it.’ He’d saved very hard for this moment and he wanted his Agnes to have a ring that showed how much hard work he had put into that saving, a ring that showed how much he loved her.
